Word: swapo
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...French diplomat. The trigger for the complaints: the U.S.'s lone vote in the U.N. Security Council last week against condemning South Africa's massive search-and-destroy mission in Angola. The assault was aimed at guerrillas of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), who are fighting for the independence of Namibia, a territory administered by South Africa...
Almost on cue, three days after South African troops had begun to withdraw from Angola, Defense Minister Magnus Malan announced that they had captured a Soviet soldier, Nikolai Pestretsov, 36, in a convoy of SWAPO guerrillas and Angolan forces some 31 miles from the Namibian border. Two unidentified Soviet lieutenant colonels and two Soviet women also were reported killed...
That Soviet military personnel are in Angola and that Moscow is supporting SWAPO has long been known. But this was the first evidence that Soviet advisers were involved with SWAPO down to the platoon level. According to the latest U.S. intelligence estimates, the Soviet Union has about 1,000 military and economic advisers in Angola. In addition there are around 400 East Germans (British estimates go as high as 2,500) and up to 20,000 Cuban military personnel...
...willingness to tolerate South Africa's provocative policies will only lead to delay, thus strengthening Soviet influence in the region. Last January South Africa withdrew its approval of a U.N.-sponsored plan for a cease-fire and for supervised free elections in Namibia, largely for fear that SWAPO would emerge victorious. Last week Secretary of State Alexander Haig revealed that Pretoria is again ready to go along with the U.N. plan, provided certain unspecified "confidence-building" measures are guaranteed beforehand...
...have taken a leading role in trying to forge a United Nations-sponsored Namibia settlement, called for an immediate South African withdrawal. The U.S., for its part, issued a statement saying that the new South African action "must be understood in its full context" of the struggle against SWAPO and emphasized the "urgent" need for a Namibia solution. U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim cut short a vacation in his native Austria and hastily returned to New York to prepare for a Security Council meeting, as demanded by Angola, on the incursion. By week's end, heated exchanges had taken...